Fighting Myself
by Lady Mayflower
Summary: Through his adventures in the womb, Isaac comes across an enemy unlike any of the other Mom-tastrophes he's found so far...


_Hey, fellow Isaac fanboys! Welcome to our super-snazzy new BINDING OF ISAAC CATEGORY! :squees like a fangirl: We actually got it! I'm so excited! :)_

_Unfortunately, I can't PROPERLY christen this board. I had plenty of one-shots and the beginning of a multi-chapter story that I've been dying to post as soon as we got an official board, but just a few days ago, my laptop crashed, and I'll never see any of those stories again. Yes, sad, I know. So, while I'm working on remaking those, which will be sure to come as soon as I finish picking up the pieces of my life that were lost in the tragic accident, I figured I may as well come into the board with tears blazing and move my original Isaac one-shot to where it belongs. Enjoy, guys!  
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**LAWYERBOT SAYS: "Oh, boy, new category! Time for disclaimers!"  
><strong>"The Binding of Isaac", including all mentioned characters, enemies, and bosses (c) Edmund McMillen  
>Original story of 'the binding of Isaac' (c) ...uhm...whoever wrote the Bible?<p>

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><p>It's bad enough my mom wants to kill me. It's bad enough I'm fighting for my life in my own basement. It's bad enough I'm not the only one of my ENDLESS brothers and sisters to end up down here because of her. It's bad enough I've had to fight Satan's harbringers and the seven deadly sins to get here alive. It's bad enough that the only way to kill Mom for good and save my life was to dive into her womb and hunt down her heart.<p>

This...I don't even know what to say. I've been speechless nearly the whole time I've been down here, but this...THIS...

It looks just like me. But different. It's kind of bloody-looking, like it's made out of some kind of raw flesh. (Then again, seeing everything else down here, I'm not surprised.) But other than that, we're identical. We're the same size. We're both stuck running around naked (though I picked up Mom's underwear a few floors up). He's just as bald as I am (since my Maggie wig is upstairs).

He's got the exact same eyes I do. They're big and black, just like mine. And they glisten in the weird red lighting. He's been crying. Just like I have. And he looks scared. Just like I am.

All of the flies and parabites in the room are dead now. It's just me and him. We're on opposite sides of the room, and he's just staring at me. He blinks when I blink, breathes when I breathe. And staring, just like I'm staring at him.

What's his trick? Is he going to start chasing after me like those scary Globins? Does he spit flies like a Hive? Do I have to hit his brain like the Knights? Is he a charger like Chub? Or a leaper like Monstro? Does he fire lasers like a Vis? Or shoot missiles like the Clotties and the Boils? Does he explode like a Boom Fly? Or leave an acid-trail like Peep and the Brains?

I can't tell - he's still just staring at me.

I take a step forward. So does he. I run backwards. So does he. I step left. He goes right. (Duh - that's HIS left.) Now we're walking in a circle. Everytime I take a step, he follows. I run at him, but not straight on. He follows. We run past each other. I can't get close to him. And I don't think I want to.

I fire a few tears at him - it kills everything else here, right? As soon as I do, though, he does the same. I run out of the way to avoid his bloody tears, but when I do that, he runs out of the way of mine.

I can't hurt him. At least...not without hurting myself.

I almost don't want to hurt him. It's Mom's fault he's down here, just like it's her fault I'm down here. He looks just like me. He probably lived a happy life, too. Before Mom went crazy and ran into his room with a butcher's knife. I wonder what his name is. I wonder if he likes to draw. I wonder if Mom ever put him in a blonde wig and called him Magdelene. He'd probably look just like her, too.

I stop to look around the room. All of the doors are going to stay closed until I beat him. If I'm going to find Mom's Heart and get out of here, I need to figure this out. Come on, Isaac, think! Don't be like Maggie and feel bad for him. Think like Cain and Judas - what would they do to get out of here? (Besides summon the devil and stampede through everything. My Book of Belial is upstairs with Judas' hat, so I can't do EXACTLY what he would do.)

I cover one eye, even though he does the same. I don't have Cain's eye-patch, but maybe this'll help me think like him a little.

That's when I see it. I see spikes. Normally, I hate seeing them, but in this room, I barely noticed. There's only one little patch of them, and they're in the back corner. When I step on them, my feet bleed really bad (even when I'm wearing Mom's heels). Would they make his feet hurt and bleed, too? Would he be dumb enough to step on them?

I have to try.

I walk until my back's touching the wall. He does the same. Step by step, I walk towards the corner. He does the same. Except his corner's filled with deadly spikes. Mine's not.

He starts yelling when he steps on the spikes. They really hurt. But I don't move, so neither does he. Every second, he screams louder, shaking from how much those spikes hurt. He's crying. Probably because I'm crying, too.

I say sorry right before he falls over into the spikes, disappearing with a bloody _poof! _I didn't want to kill him. I didn't want to hurt him.

Like I said, I couldn't hurt him without hurting myself.

All of the doors swung open once he died. Remembering that I was running for my life, I headed into the next room to fight the next round of monsters Mom had rotting away down here.

I named everyone else I've found so far. I think I'll call him Dople. Hopefully, I don't find another one.

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><p><em>Hope I tugged at a few heartstrings with my little one-shot. I always thought Dople was a really interesting character (not that they aren't all...interesting). I can't help but think that Isaac's journey through the womb was as easy as the game's lack of narration makes you think. (Y'know, not counting the epic death that it can rain - that part's hard enough on poor Isaac.)<em>

_Anyway, can't wait to start filling this category up! Thanks for reading, guys! Now get out there and do your part to make this board AWESOME!  
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_**§ Tucker's Mayflower, signing off! §**_


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